Most preparation firms already have people who know what to do with a good finding. What they don't have is the hours to go looking across a whole client base, one ledger at a time, on the chance that something is there.
Join the waitlistThe constraint
A firm that can prepare a return can evaluate a correction. Finding the correction is the expensive part.
Advisory work is usually described as a knowledge gap — hire a strategist, buy a strategy library, learn the elections. In firms we have watched, that is rarely what actually blocks it. The people can evaluate an opportunity in twenty minutes once it is in front of them, with the authority attached. What nobody has is the day per client it would take to go find one, across a book of business, most of which will turn up nothing.
Narrowing where a qualified person looks is a different problem from replacing them, and a much more tractable one. It is the problem we are building for.
The fit
The method needs the accounting the return was built from. Firms that do both the bookkeeping and the return have everything required. Firms that receive a trial balance from elsewhere can still work, with more of the input coming from the client.
Entities with real operations, real fixed assets and several years of history. The findings we care about accumulate over time — a treatment decision repeated across four years is worth more than a one-off, and is easier to substantiate.
We produce findings and reasoning. We do not file, do not represent taxpayers, and do not post to accounting systems. If the requirement is automation through to submission, this is the wrong tool and we would rather say so now.
We are in development and not taking customers. If the need is immediate, we are not the answer, and a waitlist entry is the honest extent of what we can offer.
Control
A tool that produces tax positions a firm cannot audit is a liability transferred to the firm. So the reasoning travels with the finding.
Questions
By treating it as a search problem rather than a knowledge problem. The constraint in most firms is the review hours needed to find opportunities across a client base, not the ability to evaluate one. Narrowing where a specialist looks is a different problem from replacing one.
OptiBooks is being built for firms that already prepare the returns and hold the accounting records. It is not a filing product and not a research library, and it assumes a qualified professional is reading the output.
Yes, and it is structural rather than a setting. Findings arrive with reasoning, authority and applicability conditions. Nothing is filed and nothing is posted to an accounting system. A professional decides what to act on.
We do not have a date we would be willing to publish. We will contact waitlist firms when there is something worth their time rather than when a calendar says to.